My Dearest Son
by Anera527
Summary: A plot bunny formed when thinking about Tolkien. How exactly did he get the inspiration for the Lord of the Rings?


"_**My Dearest Son…"**_

A/N: Short one-shot I wrote with the thought of Tolkien, and a plot bunny was born. Tolkien was a genius writing LotR, but what if he had a little help? This entire story is told in the style of a letter I imagine Tolkien writing to his son Christopher after he discovered the land of Middle-earth. A little poetic license was admittedly taken with this, but I tried to stay as true to Tolkien as I could.

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My dearest:

It has been long indeed since I have written in reply to your correspondence, and for that I send my most tender apologies, but I must be truthful that I sincerely did not have any choice in the matter! Perhaps, Christopher, you have been frightfully aware of my absence here. I was certainly missed at Oxford, and I am afraid I drove your beloved mother to despair. Has it really been two weeks since my disappearance?

I must tell you, my son, that I have the upmost respect the situation I placed you all in, but allow me now to give you an explanation.

I was not in _this world_.

You are perhaps thinking me mightily confused right now as you read this, but I can assure you I have not been addled by my trip, nor by drink, and I have not yet been driven to insanity. I was well and truly in another world… or perhaps it was not a different world at all, but simply a history of _this one_ that is now long gone. Perhaps I am right, but there is no way of telling for sure, so it can only be by my own opinions that this is debated. Humor me by continuing on reading, dear boy, and listen to your father's tale.

It started, as you know, when I was making my way to meet Jack* for our meeting with the Inklings. That morning, however, I was running a little late, and I was hurrying. Perhaps if I had been just a bit more attentive I would not have stumbled the way I did, but then I would not have found what I did. No "what-ifs", my son! They do nothing but make you wish for the past to be changed, and we all know that the past is left well enough alone. But I was walking along, and I must have turned a wrong corner, for I found myself in the most peculiar place!

It was a wide, spacious land, all waving emerald grass, and the most warming golden light shone on everything. The colors of this land stole my breath away: I have never in all my days seen such brilliance, such perfection. For a moment, I am unashamed to say that I thought perhaps I had ascended to the Good Father's Paradise, but I quickly disabused myself of such a notion. Even now I cannot put words to paper successfully and still do the land justice—the most I could say is that surely this was the sort of beauty and perfection the Earth was when it was first created! It was perfection.

I wandered by myself for a little while, or perhaps it several hundred years—time seemed a very queer thing there; you knew not whether you had spent a second or a decade standing there. As I walked, I eventually came upon the sight of several buildings in the distance, but they seemed more like pavilions than actual houses. Fatigued from such a long walk—your dear father is not as young as he once was, mind you!—I stopped to catch my breath beside the most interesting of trees. It was tall, kingly, and its bark, unlike the common greyish-brown of this world, was stunning silver, and its leaves a pure golden colour. It took me quite by surprise especially since I realised that I thought the tree was trying to say hullo! I was just laying my hand upon its surface, curious, when I heard a high, clear voice speak up from behind me.

'I say, sir,' it said to me, 'I have not seen any Man this side of the Sea.'

Your father's heart is not as young as it once was, either, my son, and I received a dreadful shock. I spun—which again was perhaps not the best course of action in my age—and I came face to face with the strangest creature I have ever met.

He was a little fellow, no taller than three foot five, and rather plump. He had a plain but good-natured face, with deep brown eyes and he looked like he spent several hours in the sun a day. His hair was curling and a greying golden-brown, and it almost obscured the sight of his ears, which were pointed like the pictures of Pan* I have seen. Even more shocking, however, is that this fellow had no shoes—instead, his feet were abnormally large and covered with hair that was quite as thick as that on his head! He looked friendly enough, if perhaps a little wary, but I was hard-pressed to remember any of my manners. When finally I gathered my wits, I made the proper introductions.

'Hullo, my dear fellow. Professor John Tolkien at your service.'

He smiled, and surprised me again by bowing almost to his toes. 'Samwise Gamgee for you and yours. Been admiring the _mallorn_, have you? The tree here,' he amended at my question. 'The Elven trees are always somethin'.'

Of course, at my inquiry of "Elves", he frowned again and asked me if I "hadn't heard o' no Elves before". I nearly corrected his grammar out of habit before catching myself and simply explained his idea of Elves were undoubtedly different from my own. So he smiled again.

'No need to worry, Mr. Tolkien,' he said, and it was then I realised that this Samwise Gamgee, or Sam as he wanted me to call him, was a part of the working class, perhaps a servant of some kind. 'I'll just bring you on up here and introduce you to our Elves, sir, and I'm sure I'll find Mr. Frodo as well. You seem a good chap, a little like Mr. Strider if you don' mind me saying, sir.' Of course I had no idea who Mr. Frodo or Mr. Strider was, but I humored him as he led me into the small group of buildings.

Here, I must stop and tell you, Christopher, that Elves in this world are utterly shameful next to next to the Elves of that world. They are a tall, willowy folk, fair-featured, beautiful, with keen eyes and clear, melodious voices. I learned that they were also a warrior kind, when they needed to fight, and I do not doubt such a thing. Although fair, one could sense the underlying power these Elves held. To spare you the length of a novel to read, I will only say that I counseled with those who were the "High Elves", namely a dark-haired Elf who was named Elrond and a breathtaking female who named herself Galadrial. I was told I was in the land of Tol Eressa, in the Undying Lands, the first home of the Elves and now their last.

I was in a land called Arda, my son, a world not unlike our own. Indeed, I learned later that Master Samwise and his companion had sailed at different times over the Sundering Sea from "Middle-earth", not entirely unlike the Americas to Britain.

Sam's companion. My son, I will tell you I have never met any who are quite like Frodo Baggins. After my council with the Elves—beyond indescribable, just like the land—Master Samwise took me along a road lined with beautiful yellow flowers.

'Elanor, Mr. Tolkien,' Sam told me as we walked. 'My eldest daughter bears that name, Mr. Frodo's idea, of course, due to these little plants.' Sam is a gardener, Christopher, so his affection for the earth was evident. He continued to point out different flowers and trees to me, and I was feeling quite in awe of it all when he suddenly smiled broadly and called out,

'Hoy, Mr. Frodo! We got ourselves a visitor, a Man, and not unlike Mr. Strider, too.'

It seemed there was another of the Little People there in the immortal land, only one other allowed in a land of immortals. This was the fellow who was, when I first saw him, seated amongst the waving emerald grass and alternately reading a book and looking out at the horizon. Hearing Master Samwise's call, he turned to us.

Unlike Master Samwise, he had fairer features—not too unlike the elves to be perfectly honest, and he was paler than Sam, and considerably thinner. Although his hair was nearly completely grey, I could tell that in youth he had had dark golden hair, perhaps even a dusty brown, and his eyes were a liquid silver flecked with green. I could tell there was something truly extraordinary about this stranger, and when I introduced myself it was nearly with as much awe as I had greeted the Elves.

But he merely smiled and laughed, and it seemed he knew the direction of my thoughts. 'So this is the Man I have seen haunting my sleep.'

I must be truthful, my son, and say that my jaw dropped in shock hearing his words. _Did this stranger have the gift of foresight?_ The idea of seeing the future is perhaps something of a wife's tale in our society, I must take note, but I truly believe that the idea of _premonitions_ is something possible for those empathetic enough or open to the idea of the future.

He stood then, slowly, and bowed quite as low as Master Samwise had! He was taller than the former, I must note, and most fascinating was that when he moved his right hand I noticed that it had no ring finger—it looked to be cut or torn off, although I found later that I was wrong on both accounts. His finger, in all reality, had been _bitten_ off, a tale I will tell in due time.

It was quite the remarkable meeting, my son! These Little Folk, who called themselves "Hobbits", seemed quite willing to speak to me, and imagine my honest astonishment when they had no trouble believing my explanation of how I got there in the first place!

'It seems a lot o' people are going There And Back Again, Mr. Frodo,' Sam said wryly, and there passed a look between them so deep it seemed they could read each other's minds. Master Frodo merely smiled, and at my inquiry of the joke I seemed to be missing, explained that "There And Back Again" was a phrase his uncle Bilbo used often. In fact, Christopher, he said his uncle wrote a book by that title!

And here is the main explanation of my tale. There in the Undying Lands, I was told of the War of the Ring, a Great History of Arda in which Rings of great Power were created. Lady Galadrial and Lord Elrond were two held the Rings for the Elves, and they helped Masters Frodo and Samwise tell the histories, of how the Dark Lord Sauron, fancying himself Lucifer, created a Ring of Power for himself, and one that could control all the others! But he was defeated in the First Age in Arda, and his Ring—which also was his lifeline—taken, and so remained a bodiless spirit for over three millennia until his Ring was rediscovered from where it had been lost.

So it was that the Dark Lord's Ring of Power fell into the hands of Master Frodo's uncle's hands, and passed it down to Frodo himself. Again, I will spare you a letter the length of a book and simply say that due to this there sprang into existence as frantic Quest to destroy the One Ring, so Sauron could finally be defeated, for once and for all.

It was quite the remarkable Tale, for I sat and listened to it all, and finally I begged them to let me to write it when I returned home. I was given the hobbits' blessing, and the Elves, and so I was sent back here, and was quite surprised to find out that I had been missing for over two weeks!

I sincerely hope that you will have read this letter with an open heart, and I hope you can forgive your father for his disappearance, and hopefully you will not think of me as manic. I must write the Tale out, my son, I must do so quickly, but first I must explain it to you and your mother so you will understand.

I will be coming home in a matter of days, my dear Christopher—first I must speak with Oxford and settle some issues that have arisen. Give your mother my love, and let her read this as a token of my sincerity—I do so miss you all.

Your own dear and loving Father.

**A/N: **That was fun. I hope I didn't just destroy Tolkien and all he wrote. My sincerest apologies if I didn't always write like someone who's British—I'm American, you see.

*When I have Tolkien mentioning "Jack" in this story he is referring to his best friend C.S. Lewis, the author of the popular _Chronicles of Narnia _series. Included in this sentence there is mentioning of the Inklings, which was a group of authors who met and reviewed each other's stories, of which both Tolkien and Lewis were a part of.

*Pan was the name of a Greek god, the god of the wild. He is often portrayed in stone or paintings with pointed ears.


End file.
